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The white bear and the orca

By Strega

It was a familiar black fin the nanuq saw advancing up the inlet, and she backed off to a safe distance to watch. Even from a good way up the slope she could see the deep gouge in the front of the fin, and the white scars leading diagonally down from there. Years ago a desperate nanuq had bitten and clawed the orca. Well known though this particular orca was to the bears, no one was quite sure which nanuq had left the scars. Encounters between the black and white sea creatures and the polar bears always ended one way, presuming the bear got within reach of the orca's fangs, and the bear that left those scars was long since digested.

Confident that she was far enough from the shore to be safe, the nanuq did not flinch when the orca swam to the shore and thrust its snout out onto the gravel. A younger bear might assume that was as far as the whale could advance, but she was not so inexperienced. An orca skilled in the trick could fling its whole body onto the shore to seize unwitting prey. Occasionally a novice orca would strand itself this way and die; she had eaten the flesh of one or two in that manner. More often the seal or nanuq who came that close to an orca ended up feeding it instead.

The orca peered at her through ink-dark eyes not too different from her own, and she considered the network of healed scars that seamed its skin. She already knew that this whale was older than her twenty years; she'd head stories of Notchfin when just a cub and told them to her own cubs in turn. No one was sure how long the whales lived, but Notchfin was as old as any nanuq alive.

"Nanuq," the orca breathed through its blowhole, and she blinked in surprise. Only very rarely did the whales deign to speak to land creatures, though their language was well understood from past encounters.

"I am Notchfin," the orca said, and the nanuq was amused to note that its name was the same as the one they had given it many years ago. "What is your name?"

"I am Iqniq," she said, "My mother named me for a falling star. What do you want, O whale? I will approach no closer, no matter what you say."

"I bear you no ill will, Iqniq. It is the Great Mother to whom I wish to speak. The seals say her camp is nearby."

Iqniq thought about that. "I will tell the Mother," she said, for it was not for her to decide whether to pass on the information. If a whale wished to speak to the great bear, it was the great bear who would decide whether the conversation would take place.

"I will wait," the orca said, and Iqniq bobbed her muzzle politely and turned away. Enemy the whale might be, but there was still respect between the two peoples, just as the seals respected the nanuq who sometimes ate them. There was no treaty between nanuq and orca as there was between nanuq and Inuit, but there was no war, either. Both were predators who would take the other if circumstances allowed.

It was an hour's walk across gravel, snow and ice to the Mother's camp. Iqniq was hungry but she did not pause; there would be time to hunt later.

Eventually she met the first sentry, passing by with a nod on each side. The second guard was a former mate, and she paused to exchange a friendly nip and nuzzle. Perhaps he would father her next cubs, too; he was strong and skilled and might well win the contest for her affections. He had no need to turn to an Inuit woman for relief the way the young and very old bears did.

Past him was a ridge of ice, and beyond a natural hollow. Temporary dens were dug into the snowy walls within, sleeping-spots for the twenty or so nanuq who accompanied the Mother on her travels. Of course, no mere den could contain the Mother herself, who lay in the center of the hollow, surrounded by her followers.

"Great mother," Iqniq growled, and lowered her head respectfully. The Mother did not expect, nor would she receive, any greater show of submission. Though she led, it was not a tyranny. She led because her age and strength and wisdom were respected.

The bear in front of her resembled the rest of the nanuq so little that an outsider might consider her a different animal entirely. Easily ten times the mass of the largest male, the Mother had colossal paws like great slabs of muscle, fur and bone, claws as long as a man's forearm, and great jaws that could engulf a whole nanuq or walrus in one gulp -- and had, more than once. But though her massive head was as bulky as a whole nanuq, it was her body that made her what she was. Her thick neck and bulky, blubber- and fur-insulated bulk was all smooth curves and rolls of fat. The Mother was the oldest, wisest, and by far the largest polar bear ever heard of in these regions. Legends told of yet larger bears, but none had been seen in living memory.

"Iqniq, my daughter," the great bear rumbled. "What brings you back so soon? It is nearly mating time, and you were fattening yourself for the season."

"An orca comes, Mother," Iqniq said. "Notchfin, who has eaten some of us over the years. He claims to come in peace, and wishes to speak to you."

"Notchfin," said the Mother, and rubbed her cheek with a paw. "I have seen him from afar. Great and old is Notchfin, who I remember from my youth. Were there any others of his tribe?"

"I did not see any, Mother, though I watched a time from the hill in case one rose to breathe."

It has been years since one of the orca spoke to us," the Great Mother rumbled. "And I am curious. I will speak with him."

And so, a bit more that an hour later, the Great Mother and half a dozen attendant bears approached the shore. Massive and well-rounded though she was, the Mother was no invalid. The main consequence of her great size was a need to stay far to the North, and always surrounded by snow and ice, lest she overheat. She left mighty pawprints in which cubs played, and where she breached snowdrifts she left a gouge wide as a big bear was long.

The inlet here was only a few hundred yards wide, and miles from there to the greater sea. There were few places for an orca to hide, for it must surface to breathe eventually. The group of bears led by Iqnik stopped on the slope and watched for half an hour, just to be sure. It went without saying that the whales were not to be trusted with the life of the Mother. One whale was not a great threat with so many bears present, but a pod of them would be. Only when they were sure the orca was alone did the Mother approach the shore.

"Great mother," the orca whistled, and pushed itself a bit more onto the shore. "I am Notchfin."

"I know you from long ago, Notchfin," the Mother rumbled. "You have eaten several of my kin, but I do not hate you. It is our nature to take prey where we can. If I had the chance, I would eat of your kind as well."

"Yes," the orca said. "Great Mother, I have known of you since I was very young. Long have I admired you from afar, though only a few glimpses have I had. Though I have led my pod and sired calves, still I have thought of you. It was an impossible dream, of course." The orca struck a side flipper against the gravel and ice of the bank. "We have our dreams."

"My dream was once to eat all the brown and white bears, and make more room for the white," the Mother rumbled. "It was a silly dream, but I did have many good meals of my darker kin. Why have you come here, Notchfin?"

"I would lie with you, Great mother," the orca whistled. "I am old. After all these years a younger bull has finally taken my place in the pod. The females will no longer accept me; I will sire no more calves. Now I can follow my dream, at last. Lie with me."

Every bear in hearing twitched. The Mother tilted her head to the side so abruptly that a ripple passed through the fat of her neck and down her mighty back. An orca and a nanuq? It was unthinkable, a joke.

"Hear me out," Notchfin said, reading the turn of her ears. "I know you lay with lesser bears, and even walruses, to draw them close enough to eat. Once I even saw it happen. A young walrus came to you, lay with you, and was surprised by your hunger. Eventually even his flukes disappeared into your jaws. You were so close to the shore that I could perhaps have approached and devoured you, where you lay with the fur stretched around him so your black skin showed. I did not."

"What are you saying then, Notchfin?"

"Lie with me, Great Mother," the orca whistled. "And my life will be complete. Then you may eat me."

The Mother's ears went from half-backturned to fully forward and upright: the orca had her attention. The unthought-of idea was not so insane as it first appeared. Of all bears, only the Mother was large enough to lie with an orca, and only she might be large enough to eat one. Her head turned as she looked at the parts of him that lay out of the water. All in all he was almost as massive as the Great Mother but long, streamlined. Swallowable, if one's jaws were large enough, and the Mother's most likely were. It would be a huge meal, larger proportionately than anything Iqniq had ever taken, but if the stories about the Mother's youth were true, it would not be the first time she gorged to such an extent. There was a reason she was so large, after all.

"You interest me, Notchfin," the Mother growled. "Bringing a female a meal in return for a mating is well-established custom. But offering yourself? Unheard-of."

"I am alone," the Orca whistled. "I will come into shallow water, so you can be doubly sure I am not accompanied by others. You have your kin. If I try to hurt you they could tear me apart or hold me still in the shallows, and once you got your jaws around my head I could not stop you from eating me. We of the sea are easy to swallow, if we are caught, and it will be my honor to feed you. I ask only for one mating first."

"It has never been done," the Mother mused. "Perhaps, somewhere, a nanuq has pleasured a male orca. Perhaps merely to save its life, perhaps because there was actual affection. Perhaps somewhere a male bear has in his turn mounted an amenable orca cow. But never have two of us been so close in size. And never, to my knowledge, has a nanuq ever swallowed an orca. In pieces, yes, when an orca is stranded or washes up dead. But whole and alive?"

The other bears shared smiles. There was no chance, to their thinking, that the Mother would refuse such a legendary meal. They were right.

"A little way up the shore here, Notchfin, there is a place where a steam runs in, in warmer seasons. Even now it is a deep cut in the shore, and it is of a size for the two of us."

It was a well-chosen spot. Notchfin had to lie with half his bulk protruding from the shallow water, yet able to move enough so he was not entirely helpless. The smaller nanuq could gain footing and attack if necessary, though the sea was up to their shoulders. And the Great Mother, with her massive paws and bulk, could wade through the sea like a cub through a puddle.

The other bears retreated to the edges of the stream, so not to be in the way -- or not to be trampled, should the Mother and her lover grow too rambunctious. Each of them knew they were witnessing something that would likely never happen again, but even so they also knew that someone had to keep watch. One by one they took their eyes off the spectacle and scanned both the shore and the water.

She approached from his side, for the dangerous parts of an orca are at the front, and seeing her there the whale rolled half on his side to expose his underside. For the first time Iqniq saw the slit on the underside of a living orca, with a rod of pink flesh already protruding. Orcas were not endowed any better than nanuqs, it appeared. No doubt the Mother, so great in bulk compared to her usual lovers, would be disappointed.

But the orca had more to offer than Iqniq at first saw. As the Mother's great paws clasped him close and she positioned herself to love him, double and then triple the length of pink shaft emerged. It took no stroking, nor any of the affectionate pawing or nipping nanuq engaged in; the mere presence of the Mother aroused the whale. He was, it turned out, at least twice as well endowed as any nanuq Iqniq had let mount her. His member was more than half as long as a man was tall, and thick as a nanuq's ankle at the base. He would be a very challenging lover, she thought to herself. She might resort to just swallowing his length, in the Mother's place, but she did not think all of that would fit into her nether parts.

The Mother, so much larger, had no such difficulty. When it became obvious that the orca could not roll onto his back due to the shallow water and his dorsal fin, and unquestionably there was no way he could mount her as a male bear would, the Great Mother settled down on her side in the water and drew the whale close with all four paws. The thick pink shaft disappeared as the orca thrust his tail enthusiastically forward, and then there was nothing but splashing and the occasional groan as the two great animals coupled.

"They are mating," said a little voice behind her, and Iqniq was surprised to see that one of the cubs had followed them all the way from the camp. Wide-eyed and curious and bold too, this one. Under other circumstances she would have thumped him with a heavy paw and sent him running back to his mother, but it was too long a walk for a solitary cub to make safely. He was small enough that even a wandering qavvik -- wolverine -- or wolf might pick him off, and she certainly wasn't going to miss this. Instead she let the little one settle down beside her and watch.

"They are," Iqniq growled after a time. "The orca, Notchfin, has long lusted after the Mother, and for the cost of his body he has his wish. Soon they will finish, and she will eat him."

"Mating must be very good, if he is willing to be eaten just to do it."

"This is not something that normally happens, little one," she said, and just then the orca's flukes smote the water with a thunderous sound. A tremendous shudder went through his scarred body, and perhaps he would have signaled his passion through his blowhole, were he still able to speak.

He was not. Iqniq had watched the Great Mother's paws pull his head down toward her even as the two mated, and the great bear had taken no chances. A minute ago, with her massive forepaws holding his fanged jaws firmly shut, her own muzzle had gaped wide. By the time the orca shuddered and came his head was wrapped in the Great Mother's maw and his blowhole had disappeared beneath her broad black nose.

He could have stopped her. The Mother's position was not so secure in the water that he couldn't have arched his body and pulled himself away. He might not have escaped her grasp entirely, but he could have kept her jaws away at least until he finished. Yet he had not; even as he thrust into the Great Mother he had let her pull his head closer, knowing exactly what would happen. For her part, though her mighty paws were around his body and his head was firmly in her jaws, the Mother did not at first begin to swallow. Only when his shivering told her this lover was about to finish did her muzzle begin to creep forward, and he sucked in a last great breath just as his blowhole was covered and instants before he ejaculated.

The Mother had presented him with an earlier than expected choice. He lay with her, and rutted with her, and he had his pleasure and perhaps the trophy of an unheard-of mating. But if he wanted to conclude it the way a male does with a female, if he wanted to complete the act, he would have to submit to her hunger. Struggling might save him at the cost of losing what he claimed he had always wanted.

So he had not struggled. Even now, head between her teeth and with her cheeks stretched thin around his own he lay passive. Bit by bit, as his body relaxed in the aftermath of mating, his shaft reappeared along with a heavy seepage of ejaculate from the black lips of her sex. Easily though the Mother had mated with him, he was far larger than a male nanuq and had produced much more seed. Two of the male bears, large compared to Iqnik but tiny compared to the two lovers, looked at each other ruefully. It is the nature of a male to be proud of his endowment, and they had been shown up. Not even the largest nanuq could compare to an orca.

But at least they weren't being eaten. Now that her lover had his passion, the Mother's jaws began to move forward. Her cheeks were already stretched so tight the black skin beneath showed through, and her neck, for all its rolls of fat, began to mimic them as the blunt head of her meal slipped into her gullet. That head alone was as massive as any nanuq save herself, and it took a jaw-creaking stretch to take in his increasingly thick neck. A great cylindrical bulge stood out beneath her lower jaw as his snout disappeared down her throat, and her forepaws repositioned themselves one at a time -- not both at one, instructively, lest he start to struggle mid-grip. He did not, and her jaws creaked still wider.

A ripple passed through the stretched pelt of her neck as she swallowed for the first time, and the bulky whale flinched between her paws as he was visibly sucked deeper by the great contraction of her throat muscles. Finally, even as her jaws and neck distended to allow the broadest part of him into her maw, he began to struggle.

Perhaps it was simple survival impulse, occurring now because his air was cut off. Perhaps he had always intended to escape, but was so enthralled by the mating he delayed this long. In either case his long body began to thrash and his pectoral flippers, each large as a whole nanuq, began to push at her. It did not matter; they were already consumed to what would be the elbow. They could not push at her effectively, and he could not save himself. His tail flukes smote the water and at her, but with half of him down her throat she need no longer lie belly to belly with her meal. Instead she pushed his flukes away with her hindpaws and regained her feet, putting her hind parts far from the one part of him that could still resist her. With all four paws on the stream bed and her head thrust forward the Great Mother began to devour her enormous meal in earnest, powerful ripples of her swallowing muscles showing through the fur and skin of her swollen neck.

Inch by inch the protesting orca was dragged down her throat. Unlike the last meal they had seen her take, a criminal of their own kind, the whale was massive enough that black skin began to show on her flanks as her belly expanded to accommodate him. His own tough, scarred skin disappeared inches at a time as she gulped him down, her well-practiced throat muscles occasionally assisted by a fore paw the size of a young nanuq. His tall dorsal fin bent over beneath the pressure of her upper jaw, slipped beneath her chops, and was ingested along with the rest.

The great bear's breathing grew labored. Accustomed as she was to swallowing prey whole it was still challenging to breathe with such a bulky mass obstructing her airway. Were he of another species, a nanuq perhaps, yet the same size, she might not have managed him at all. He was streamlined as an otter, though, and once his top fin was bent over he went down with relative ease. Only ten minutes after she began to swallow the Great Mother stood with his flukes hanging from her muzzle, panting and shaking with effort yet just a few gulps from finishing her meal.

The shape of swallowed orca was visible beneath her pelt as she prepared herself for the final effort. Even a yard-thick layer of insulating fat and yellowish pelt thick as summer grass could not conceal nigh on ten tons of aquatic predator, all but gone now into the stomach of a terrestrial one. Beneath her stretched pelt, where the white fur in places was so stretched apart it resembled white stubble on an old Inuit's chin, the orca heaved and struggled. For all his promise of feeding her willingly, at the last he had struggled for all he was worth.

He had started his struggle too late, though, and it was far past the point where even his most heroic effort could rescue him from his fate. It would take another orca biting onto his tail to do it, and Iqniq would not want to be the whale trying that. He would not put it past her to swallow up a second whale that put its snout obligingly so near her own, gorged though she was already was with this one.

Her muzzle lifted, heaved forward, muscles worked beneath her neck fur, and suddenly the orca's flukes were half in her mouth, tips bent away from her as the root of his tail disappeared down her throat. A second forward thrust of her nose, and only the rubbery fluke tips remained. After that it was a matter of settling down and swallowing repeatedly. The black tips vanished past equally dark lips, and gradually the enormous bulge in her neck was forced downward to join the mass already deforming her fat midsection.

"He feeds the Mother. It is good," the cub said. Without looking away, Iqniq patted the small bear's nape.

"It is good," several bears repeated nearly in unison, and Iqniq smiled. The chorus was drowned out as the Great Mother gave voice to a thunderous belch. The shape in the great bear's middle still twitched from time to time, but it was clear the orca had met his match in the muscular walls of her stomach. Reluctant though he had been at the end, he had indeed fed her, and nature would take its course now whether he liked it or not.

"It is very good," rumbled the Great Mother, the slurring tone in her voice departing as a last jaw-joint popped back into place. "A very good whale. I have not eaten something so near my size in many years. And a good --," she began, before her eye fell on the little one next to Iqniq. "A good companion."

"A good mate, she means," the cub whispered, and Iqniq smiled again.

The Mother stretched her legs experimentally, and the other bears saw that she could barely reach the ground past the enormous swelling in her already plump middle. Just the same she dragged herself heavily out of the stream-mouth and up onto the ice. Perhaps a hundred yards from the water, with a broad trail the width of an orca-stuffed belly behind her, she came to a stop.

"I think I will rest here today," rumbled the Mother, and let a somewhat lesser belch escape her jaws. "Welcome as that meal was, moving so much food around at once does take something out of a bear."

It was the closest to helpless they had ever seen the Mother, and one of the males set out at once for the main camp. Before the others finished digging out a shelter and wind block, every bear from the communal den arrived to join them. The wind must be cold on her thinly stretched hide, even with her insulating fat, and without a word her kin gathered close to keep her warm.

"You honor me," the Great Mother said as she settled down to sleep in the circle of bears, "Thank you, my children."

With twenty other bears huddled close around her the Great Mother dozed, and Iqniq lay down her head as well. A faint rumble of digestion emerged from the guts of the great bear, along with a ponderous hiss of breath, and she found herself wondering exactly what was happening on the other side of the wall of flesh.

She had seen the Mother eat only three times in the two years she had traveled as part of the encampment. Twice it had been a nanuq criminal, condemned and dispatched down the slippery gullet an orca had recently walked into more-or-less voluntarily. The third time was a half-dozen Inuit, criminals too and sent thence by their village. The Mother was a convenient method of disposal, when you had someone to get rid of; no mess, no bodies to dispose of, just a belch or two after the meal.

Iqniq had thought the Mother ate at other times, perhaps when it was her own turn for patrol. Now, she was not so sure. Just as she had seen the Great Mother eat only very rarely, she had yet to see the great bear relieve herself, or hear anyone mention it.

Did the Mother in fact need to eat at all? Did she expel waste the way the lesser bears did? Or did she simply endure, and grow with each of her infrequent meals? What was happening on the other side of that wall of fur, flesh and fat? Simple digestion, or incorporation of a nine-ton bulk of orca into what would soon be an even larger bear? Such a large meal would almost double the mass of the Great Mother, if her suspicions were correct.

Iqniq shrugged. It did not matter, after all. What did it matter if a ten-ton bear became a nineteen-ton bear, save to make her a grander personage? If the Mother had ill intentions toward them she was already more than large enough to eat them all. She was more than just an eating machine. She was worthy of the respect granted her.

So she and her kin settled down to sleep, and Iqniq considered in a little more than a year, it would be the Great Mother's ninetieth birthday. A present from the clan would need to be arranged, and she had some ideas.

It was unlikely in the extreme that another orca would willingly walk the path the last one had, but it was not outside the bounds of probability that one might be tricked and trapped. It was only fair, after all, that if an orca might on occasion eat a nanuq, that just as occasionally the tables might be turned.